A blog about Marinwood-Lucas Valley and the Marin Housing Element, politics, economics and social policy. The MOST DANGEROUS BLOG in Marinwood-Lucas Valley.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Proposed Maintenance Facility will be an ugly industrial loading area

The proposed Marinwood Maintenance Compound won't have a grassy area in front.

This area must be used for loading/unloading of landscape materials.

The Marinwood CSD maintenance crew generates big piles of landscaping debris and trash each week. They store this in the large open area next to the horse shoe pits in Marinwood Park to allow the convenient loading/dumping of material.

Large piles of landscaping waste and trash is stored in the open at the Maintenance shed

A bucket loading operation requires much space as you can see in this video. Generally, the dump trailer is loaded from the side into the center of the trailer. The operator must do this to balance the load for safety. This means the bucket loader requires a large area for scooping material and turning.The truck and trailer must be parked perpendicular to the bucket loader. In the site plan of the proposed Maintenance Facility below, you can see that the only area where this operation can take place is IN FRONT of the Maintenance Facility. The architect has drawn a walking path in this area to deceive the planning department. There is NO ROOM inside the walled maintenance compound to perform a mechanized loading operation.Our Ford F250 is 22 feet long.and the dump trailer is approximately 20 feet long including tongue.This means that 42 feet of space will be required for the truck/trailer and an additional 40' to 60' feet to the side will be required for the bucket loader and material. This will occupy all the area between the maintenance building and Miller Creek.

Proposed Maintenance Facility with old facility overlay in brown

This drawing shows the footprint of the proposed Maintenance Bldg and the old building footprint in brown. The brown box on the left is the area the architect calls open storage. In fact the entire area from the current building to the horse shoe pit is used for landscaping debris, parking and tool storage. Clearly there is no area suitable for loading and unloading material within the proposed Maintenance Building above. The architect shows this area as green space and a walking path but it will not happen. It will be used for parking and storage of debris and landscaping materials. The is no alternative.

What happened to the access road that the architect showed in previous drawings? It has disappeared. This is highly deceptive. The architect must show where essential activities will take place on the building site. Safety vehicles and pedestrians must pass through this area.

The drawings do not show the true impact to the stream conservation area and Marinwood Park.

The proposed Marinwood CSD Maintenance Facility is simply too big and inefficient, harms the environment and occupies land that should be used for recreational purposes as intended.